As practice for our final mural, we embarked on a little tissue paper pointillist adventure. I found this picture of a rafter that seemed perfect for this attempt.

Unfortunately, I can't find the title of the piece or the name of the original artist. Everywhere it appears on the internet seems to be just using it as an anonymous example of pointillist art.

Each student was given one square of the final piece, and tasked with replicating it as closely as possible through the medium of tissue paper squares glued to a piece of card stock. No students were allowed to see the final image until all of the squares were finished.

Though we started with a fairly good variety of color in our available tissue paper supply, many students had a hard time noticing the subtlety of colors present in a particular square. They would notice, for example, that their square had purple spots, but not that those purple spots were a very pale shade of lavender. Adding dark purple tissue paper where light lavender should be causes some problems in the final piece.

Throughout the process, the students tried to guess what the final piece could possibly be. Some of them tried to guess famous pieces of art or famous artists.

I told one student, "It's not something you've seen before, it's just a pointillist piece of art."

"A pointless piece of art?"

"No, POINTILLIST. A pointillist piece of art."Though our final image isn't nearly as clear as the original, we definitely have some of the key lines and large areas of color. It tends to look more like the original the smaller it gets, which is basically true of all pointillism.